40% Indians likely to live in urban areas by 2030, says Hardeep Singh Puri

New Delhi: Forty percent of India’s population will live in urban regions by 2030 and we will have to build six to eight hundred million square metres of urban space for it, said Union Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri on Tuesday. “40 percent of our population or 600 million Indians are expected to live in our urban centres by 2030. To cater to this growing urban population, India has to build 600 to 800 million square metres of urban space every year till 2030,” Puri said at the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Webinar on Atmanirbhar Bharat. “5,151 projects worth more than Rs 2 lakh crore were identified in 100 smart cities. As of today, the mission has tendered around 4,700 projects worth Rs. 1,66,000 crore which is about 81 per cent of the total projects proposed,” he added. He also said that more than 1,638 projects worth over Rs 27,000 crores have been completed under the mission. Stating that India is currently the world’s second-largest steel producer with production standing at 111.2 million tonnes in 2019, he said that the Steel Ministry’s vision of 300 million tonnes of capacity by 2030, will be strongly supplemented by the demand generated by urban infrastructure development over the next decade.